Tuesday, August 9, 2016

then decomposes to be reabsorbed

Ascending Bernard Mountain yesterday ▲. I have a second complaint about Acadia National Park - parking blows. I understand why, and to the park's credit they run constant shuttles from the large parking lot at Park Headquarters, and we've been the fucks who won't use them. My complicity and fine metaphors etc. We got to the Gorge Path trail head yesterday at nine, all four parking spots taken, no road parking allowed. Instead of Dorr and Cadillac Mountains yesterday we climbed Mansell and Bernard Mountains. We've now done all of the western half of Acadia. We going to try to leave the house shortly to get to Gorge trail head, and I've alternatives for when we find the four spots taken already anyway, but Earthgirl is still asleep and I'm not gonna wake her, so maybe Door and Cadillac tomorrow and Champlain and Penobscot today. Right now? From where I'm typing, taken just now, a photo of a shadow of a hummingbird dipping at a red feeder!

O! I am way better - though still responsibly cautious - with rocks and on heights than I was two weeks ago.

In yesterday's post I mentioned the Hillarium smearing Jill Stein as an anti-vaxxer. I had no idea whether Stein is an anti-vaxxer or not, but I knew beloved Landru (who will get the sillyass Star Trek allusion in this post's title) would and would respond. From comments:

It's no smear. At best, Jill Stein is pandering to anti-vaxxers. And she
knows it--she made an effort to walk back her position and got busted
at it. If that is true, it's completely unforgivable and absolutely
disqualifies her from any leadership position in organized society. I
understand that you don't give a shit about that, since you're
fundamentally opposed to organized society in general, and that's your
business and I've long since accepted it, kindly and lovingly, I hope.
But no quarter for a fucking idiot of her magnitude. An idiot who is, I
hear tell, an actual medical doctor. Fucking despicable.

At
worst, she's an actual anti-vaxxer, and it looks to me like that's the
case, because the language she uses in pandering to anti-vaxxers is
exactly the language that anti-vaxxers use to claim they're not
anti-vaxxers. EXACTLY that language. I know that you trust my
qualifications to gauge that without reference to politics. And I credit
that it's possible that she's pandering, which is not, as I noted, a
save for her. Not even close.

She's a nutbar and has no business
running for office, and if she's actually an anti-vaxxer instead of just
another pandering shithead politician, she and any offspring for which
she's responsible have no business being around other humans.

To which I responded:

I'll take your word for it on
Stein and anti-vaxxing: this is how I figured to do my research on the
subject: I know the issue is important to you and you're far more
informed than most people on the subject.

I was hoping the
Hillarium was *right* on that: it throws so much bullshit that accurate
insightful and useful information that would be vital in forming an
opinion about a candidate just sounds like so much Hillarium
disinformation. I wish I had been clearer in the post that was part of
my point in the first place. As I said, I don't know shit about Stein,
but I do know how the Hillarium works.

So that's that on Stein and anti-vaxxery, and that's that on what I was trying to do.

The Whitehead - um, I'm running out of patience. It's not fantastic, in any of the uses of that word. And what the fuck is a published novelist doing using the word "enormity" to mean "big." That's borderline disqualifying right there.

On Lerner's Hatred of Poetry, which I know I should read but can't yet make myself.

I have a different take on Stein and vaccines. She was trying to link a loss in faith with regulatory bodies to the antivaxxers. From everything I've read she is not antivax but her argument is way too subtle and ended up in the Hillary meat grinder as a result. A massive political misstep but not the anti-science stance Landru sees. I could be wrong on that but I am also very frustrated with many non-scientist pundits freaking out because someone states his or her support for vaccination carefully. Like other medicines, there are probably vaccines out there that shouldn't be on the market because testing was incomplete or biased. Lots of money at stake, enough to cloud results. While vaccination is good and important, that does not equal all vaccines are good and important.

Sorry, fish. Name them. Name the vaccines that are on the market that shouldn't be, that made it to market despite testing problems. Name them. Then, after you more than likely abjectly fail to do that, please tell me exactly what's money-clouded about vaccine research. Innuendo doesn't cut it here, and you, of all people, know it. Then tell me why it's okay for a medical doctor running for office to pander to anti-science freaks. Stein's nonsense is a Big Pharma gambit cloaked in "corporatey corporations doing corporatey things," and I'm very sorry to say, because I have some idea of where you come from and where you've been, that your argument here isn't a lot better.I agree that, despite her having used very carefully studied anti-vaxxer language, Stein is probably pandering, rather than anti-science. That's not really better.I'm truly sorry if I'm coming off as angry at you, fish. I'm disappointed in your comment, but I accept that it's coming from a non-evil place. Stein's caution in her statement didn't root in the scientific method or in an understanding of the state of research. It rooted in politics, pure and simple, the same kind of shit Greens purport to be upset with, as long as Hillary's doing it.

fish, Please allow me to amend my demand, in what I hope is a reasonable way: name the vaccines that are on the recommended vaccine schedule despite testing problems.Feel free to answer the former, of course, if it pleases you to do so. But I think the crux of the generalized regulatory argument would be better addressed by the recommended immunization schedule (Stein's comments addressed both FDA, which approves, and CDC, which recommends--as you probably know). And a thing antivaxxers like to spout (in their Cloaks of Vaccine Safety Pretending) is that the recommended schedule is "untested," which is of course a lie.

Fish / Vaxx = Well said; and the link between "a loss in faith with regulatory bodies [with] the antivaxxers" is important. A key element of the altRight is to equate any Federal government activity (which at base is all about standardization and regulation) with an abridgement of personal rights. Because Freedom.

First chicken pox vaccines had high failure rates. http://m.jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/197/7/944.full A kid that had one of those was at risk of shingles later in life. Was a failure of initial efficacy tests.

Money clouds research because a new vax to be administered to every kid in the US (or world) can = hundreds of millions in profits. Most researchers are honest players but... http://www.future-science.com/doi/pdf/10.4155/cli.14.116

One final point I had forgotten: the current head of the FDA was legal counsel for Monsanto and then a lobbyist think tank https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_R._Taylor This I would consider problematic.